Two Modes of Steadfastness, and Which One the Seat Requires

Six in the fifth place asks a querent which kind of steadfastness their position actually requires, and that question is worth separating from the terms the text puts it in. As Legge renders it the line makes constancy fortunate for a wife and evil for a husband, and the commentary explains the split by saying that the one follows with an unchanged mind while the other must decide what is right. Those roles are the household of the text's own period as the text and its commentary understood it. Reading past them is not permitted, and reading only them misses what the line is for.

The content that is not the framing is a real and usable distinction. Some seats are held by keeping faith with a course that has already been set, and constancy there is the whole of the virtue. Other seats exist in order to determine the course, and in those the same unchanging adherence becomes an abdication, because a duty to judge cannot be discharged once and then merely maintained. The classic attaches an outcome to each, and the two outcomes are opposite.

When the line changes, the upper trigram Zhen becomes Dui and the figure becomes Great Preponderance, King Wen 28, a ridgepole sagging under a weight too great for what carries it. The destination reads as the cost of the mismatch. A position that requires judgement and receives only adherence is loaded past its bearing points, and the beam gives way in the middle, where the decisions should have been made.